Hillary Clinton Jobs Plan: “I Can Be The Small Business President”

This past Saturday during a town hall meeting hosted by the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus and moderated by NewsOne Now host Roland Martin, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shared her views on small business development and her desire to help women and minority business owners.

“My particular hope is that I can be the small business president, and I want to focus on women and minority-owned small businesses in our country,” Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton’s Jobs Plan would include:

Infrastructure Programs

Clean Energy Investments

Small Business Investments

In talking about infrastructure, Martin asked Clinton what she would do to help minorities gain traction in the construction industry, because historically, Blacks and Latinos have been “frozen out” of those jobs.

“We have two problems that unfortunately have the same result — where people are frozen out or equally importantly, not sought out. I want to make sure every training program is reflective of our population. I want to provide an apprenticeship credit to companies, to unions, to others to train young people,” she said.

She also highlighted the need for middle-aged Americans to be able to have access to the same training opportunities.

“Anywhere we do infrastructure, that if the federal government has any money into it, there must be a program for recruiting and hiring and, where necessary, training people from less advantaged communities,” she added.

When talking about the Small Business Administration (SBA) lending to only 1.7 percent out of $23 billion to African-Americans, Clinton said, “We’ve got to have a much more vigorous effort to reach out to and help people, number one, apply for the contracts that are available.”

“There is, and I agree with this, there is a preference in the law for small businesses that are minority and women-owned. I want to make sure that preference is translated into benefits that doesn’t just sit up on the books and that doesn’t have any results,” said Clinton.